With continuous reduction in the price of a personal computer (PC) and a network device in recent years, a terminal which is used for business such as PC is distributed to a greater part of the employees for the actual works in the company. When the price of PC is lowered and such low price PC is widely used for business in the company, the number of PCs which require the maintenance work by the apparatus administrators in the company is also increasing proportionally. Such maintenance work includes, for example, update of version of operating system (OS) and job application, fixing of bugs, countermeasure for hardware fault and virus, and extermination of virus, or the like. A management cost of such maintenance work is very high and becomes remarkable in proportion to increase in the number of employees.
As a means for reducing such management cost, a system operation method which is called a server-client system has been employed. In this method, the principal programs and data are accumulated in the side of server, and the data to be accumulated in the side of client, for example, such as Thin Client is reduced.
Since arithmetic process and accumulation of data are mainly performed in the server side in the server client system, necessity and frequency of update of version, fixing of bugs, countermeasure for virus, and extermination of virus of applications used individually for OS and jobs in the client side such as the thin client are reduced, the total management cost can be lowered.
Moreover, in these years, attention is paid to an IC card (called a smart-card) including therein a processor called an IC chip as a key device having the electronic authenticating function. The IC card means a card including a central processing unit (CPU) within an internal IC card module. As a memory of the IC card, ROM, EEPROM or the like are used. Since the IC card has the arithmetic function therein, the IC card itself can determine whether the access is made from an authorized user or not when the write or read operation is instructed from a host apparatus. Moreover, since forgery of the CPU itself is difficult, tampering of information issued from an IC card module (IC card chip) as an anti-tampering device and illegal access to the internal side of the IC card module are difficult. Therefore, a system having higher security level can be formed. Many IC cards can be controlled to adequately output or not to output the information thereof to a reader/writer or to a host by collation between the registered personal identification number (PIN) of a user and the PIN stored within the card. The IC card is provided, therein, with an electronically erasable and programmable memory such as EEPROM and RAM in order to store the applications and information of a user and a card provider. The IC card is capable of authenticating a card owner and outputting the information for preventing denial by outputting the information which only the card owner knows or generates to the external side of card by conducting the arithmetic operation using the information (secret key or the like) which can be stored only in said card for the information inputted from the external side.
Moreover, a flash memory card is a memory card including a non-volatile memory module which can store therein the information of a user. Many flash memory cards do not have “hardware resistivity against attack from a third party” (anti-tampering property). The flash memory card having no anti-tampering property is de-assembled when it is subjected to robbery or missing or the like and the information stored can easily be leaked to a third party through analysis of memory in the card or controller.
Moreover, as described in JP-A-2001-209773, a flash memory interface and a flash memory card having the IC card function are disclosed. The flash memory interface and flash memory card having the IC card function are conveniently capable of carrying the stored document and setting file or the like of the user established within a personal computer and a work station by storing within the card because of its size in the memory capacity thereof.